Is the Sanders campaign going truther?

The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn’t over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.

In a conversation with Yahoo News, a top Sanders campaign adviser made a series of explosive allegations about how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a political technology company that works with the party handled the incident. According to the Sanders adviser, the DNC and NGP VAN, a firm that has a contract with the party organization to operate a voter file, have responded to the data breach by “leaking information” and “stonewalling an investigation” into the matter.

“We have demanded a full investigation from top to bottom,” the Sanders adviser said. . .

“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh [Uretsky] from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” the adviser said. . .

The Sanders adviser described the fact Uretsky was recommended to the campaign by people with links to the DNC as astonishing in light of what happened. Specifically, the adviser pointed out that the campaign was slammed by Clinton’s team for the breach and punished by the DNC.

“I just think it’s utter hypocrisy on their part,” said the adviser. “I mean here we are being attacked for the behavior of an individual, which we ultimately fired. We agree he acted improperly, but it’s just amazing to me that this … individual that actually caused this trouble in our campaign was recommended by these guys.”

Hey Top Campaign Adviser, what exactly are you trying to imply, nudge nudge wink wink?

The adviser suggested the DNC and NGP VAN are “ignoring their own responsibility,” arguing that Uretsky’s references from people linked to the party and the company show both the DNC and NGP VAN “bear responsibility” for the incident. The world of progressive political consulting is a small one, and, as in other professions, it’s common for people to provide recommendations for those in their network. Still, given what happened with the breach, the adviser suggested Brown’s recommendation of Uretsky could be evidence of a conspiracy.

“I don’t know how you can more centrally connect this thing than those two entities,” the adviser explained. “Here we are being attacked by both of those entities when, in fact, they recommended this guy to the campaign.” [emphasis added]

This story is lightly sourced (maybe H.A. Goodman counts as a “top campaign adviser.”) But Sanders should quash this kind of thing right away.

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I dunno, I don’t have any inside info but how do you know there isn’t something to this. There is absolutely no doubt but that DWS has her thumb on the scale for Hillary, there is zero evidence that Sanders or high officials in his campaign knew anything about this, and the DNC handled this in a way to provide maximum embarrassment and damage to the Sanders campaign when they could have been much more discrete. None of that is in question. So if the DNC did recommend the perp to the Sanders campaign – and I have no reason to doubt it – that just makes it stink worse. No blame to HRC here, I’m talking about DWS.

kped

Yeah, because the DNC and Clinton, before the primary started and they knew that Sanders would have support (and even though his support would be about 20 points behind her), decided to plant a mole in his campaign, to eventually use should he get to “close”, by creating a fictitious data breach and having him access it.

Here’s a tip: Say out the entire conspiracy theory out loud. If it sounds dumber and dumber as you go along, it’s likely BS. If you can imagine a GIF with lines and words drawn pointing to things done in MS Paint, it’s likely BS.

This story has that all. The level of complexity and forsight and general “evil villain” behavior to even think this was some conspiracy is ridiculous.

Oh come on. They would have presumed that Sanders would offer some competition, obviously Hillary is bothering to run a primary campaign and DWS is bothering to shamelessly favor her. Nobody says the data breach was fictitious, only that the Sanders campaign doesn’t have to own this guy and that the DNC’s reaction was inappropriate and continued to demonstrate favoritism. That’s not even a theory, it’s manifestly true.

kped

Thinking he would offer some competition, is a whole lot different then planting a freaking mole to one day exploit. It’s such an asinine idea…i’m losing heaps of respect for a lot of commentators here. This is freeper level stupid. This is chemtrails and anti-vax stuff.

random

Nobody says the data breach was fictitious,

The guy quoted above is claiming the data breach was basically fictitious.

only that the Sanders campaign doesn’t have to own this guy

Yes they do.

and that the DNC’s reaction was inappropriate

No it wasn’t.

and continued to demonstrate favoritism.

No it didn’t.

That’s not even a theory, it’s manifestly true.

No it isn’t.

MDrew

It did and it is. As do you.

Gregor Sansa

Yes, it did and it is. And it very much was. But they do.

random

Yes they do.

Oh, how they do.

efgoldman

They would have presumed that Sanders would offer some competition

Carrying an awful lot of weight, there, isn’t it?
Things all cockamamie conspiracy theories always have in common: They require the knowledge and cooperation of an awful lot of people, whether direct conspirators or not, none of whom ever talk about it to anyone. That’s why the fiction stories always posit large, dark organizations (“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”)
Human beings in real life aren’t built like that.

DocAmazing

I can think of demonstrated ratfking stories by Republicans that are far more intricate and left behind big trails, and no, I don’t mean Watergate.

Just because it involves juggling doesn’t mean it isn’t part of the circus.

joe from Lowell

Deep cover mole stories? That is an extraordinary claim.

What’s more, we really don’t need it to adequately explain everything that’s happened. Heck, you don’t even need Uretsky to be a mole in order to argue that the breach was a deliberate set-up (not that I’m backing this theory myself).

DocAmazing

Y’know, if you want to get someone to do you a favor, you don’t have to put them in as a mole at first. You recommend them for the job, and therefore you have good relations with them; at some point, you ask an innocuous favor, make a harmless suggestion, or just bribe them.

Once again, everybody goes full Robert Ludlum when a little Henry James explains things nicely.

sharculese

everybody goes full Robert Ludlum

I don’t know what terrible metaphors and gratuitous rape scenes have to do with the NGP VAN leak, and I don’t want to know.

joe from Lowell

The thing is, we don’t even need the Henry James. This story 100% works if Uretsky is a legitimate Sanders data guy who noticed that the firewall was down and looked into the problem, and DWS pounced.

Manny Kant

But the Sanders people clearly didn’t just “look into the problem” – they downloaded a bunch of private Clinton data in hopes of using it.

joe from Lowell

in hopes of using it

Thank you for the CT. I notice that the one attributed to the Sanders staffer doesn’t require mind-reading.

Joe, the Sanders staffers built 25 targeted filters that contained content of concrete, immediate usefulness to the campaign:

Uretsky and his staff created a series of lists with names like “HFA Support 30 percent), and finally those who could go either way (30–70 percent).

In addition to the standard turnout and support scores, they employed variants titled “Primary Prioritization” and “Combined Persuasion.” They only looked at states with primaries before or on Super Tuesday (Alabama, Texas, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, Arkansas, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee) or shortly afterward (Utah and Florida).

It does not take a mind reader to determine that this useful information was collected with the intention of using it. It is far in excess of what would be necessary to report a bug.

joe from Lowell

I must have missed that because it was Christmas Eve.

sharculese

It’s certainly more detailed, but not substantially different in content from David Atkin’s piece at Washington Monthly from a week ago.

Also, they were so concerned about looking into the problem, they also went and extensively checked Martin O’Malley’s data to fully understand the problem. Right?

Gregor Sansa

They didn’t download a bunch of data, but yes, they were clearly trying to, in a way that makes no sense for just checking out the problem.

It could be that they were planning to say publicly “look at this sensitive data we have; we think they have the same stuff on us”. But that would be a stupid plan.

Morse Code for J

Hillary Clinton is such a Machiavellian political genius that she managed to plant the current Republican frontrunner so as to wreck Jeb Bush’s chances, and then Josh Uretsky to wreck the campaign of her competitor Bernie Sanders, who himself may still ultimately just be a plant of Hillary Clinton’s.

Suck on THAT, Olivia Pope.

kayden

HRC is just that good. She deserves to win it all.

nocutename

Wow! It’s all coming together. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe too?

EliHawk

You actually have to keep going on this conspiracy theory. It’s not only ludicrous that supposedly they planted this mole under deep, deep cover, it’s that this was their whole plan. The DNC and Clinton went to all this trouble to get their man on the inside of the Sanders campaign, as the head of their data outfit no less. The way they use him is not to leak all the kind if immensely valuable information he’d have simply by virtue of his job. (The kind of data, ironically, said data person got in trouble with by trying to get from Clinton). It’s not to crash his systems at a crucial moment to screw up turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s not to have him just be bad at his job so Sanders has a bad data operation.

Instead, their whole plan is to have a guy in position, just in case there’s a bug on a software update that’s open for just a few hours, so he can try to grab info and get caught. This is the Manchurian Candidate if the Sino-Soviet plot was to get Laurence Harvey arrested for drunk driving so he slightly embarrased his step dad. It’s a supposedly massive conspiracy solely to accomplish minimal damage to the campaign. To think it exists says plenty about the delusions inside the Sanders campaign. It’s an utterly ridiculous idea.

joe from Lowell

To think it exists says plenty about the delusions inside the Sanders campaign. It’s an utterly ridiculous idea.

Well, it would, if we had sound reasons to think the Sanders campaign actually believed that. Even this story limits the belief to one guy, and even then, weasels it in under the phrasing “seems to suggest,” and then provides a quote that has to be read with the accusation already in mind in order to appear like it’s evidence.

Scott Lemieux

Right. As always, the Sanders campaign should not be judged by its most irrational fans.

EliHawk

Even when the call is coming from inside the house? It’s one thing when it’s a random blogger at Salon, it’s another when it’s a “senior adviser” to the campaign. It matters when he’s an idiot.

joe from Lowell

It also matters whether he actually made the claim or not. Or, it should, anyway.

DocAmazing

If you really look into ratfking as it is practiced, it usually involves small tasks that have significant results, not years-long CIA-style burrowing.

If that’s not what the advisor is saying, then what on earth is he saying? That NGP VAN and the DNC are responsible because they provided a reference for the guy? That’s just inane.

joe from Lowell

Read the quotes in the article. He’s saying exactly what he’s saying: that it’s not fair for the DNC to be using this guy to beat them over the head after they’re the ones who recommended him.

EliHawk

Which is still asinine. You can recommend someone as being good with data and still punish him when he breaks the rules because he’s zealously working on behalf of the people that hired him. It’s good to know that in a future Sanders Administration, he’s not at fault for any cabinet appointments that come recommended to him by someone else.

joe from Lowell

Which is still asinine.

Claim abandoned, onto “Hey, what about this?”

It’s good to know that in a future Sanders Administration, he’s not at fault for any cabinet appointments that come recommended to him by someone else.

I see. Now this is coming directly from Bernie Sanders.

Hack hack hack hack. Hack hack. Sorry, cold season.

EliHawk

I see. Now this is coming directly from Bernie Sanders.

Hack hack hack hack. Hack hack. Sorry, cold season.

So, the buck stops where, exactly?

joe from Lowell

So, the buck stops where, exactly?

Lame cliches like this are the opposite of thought. Why don’t you just the H tattooed on your forehead, and leave the rest of us alone to actually discuss ideas?

EliHawk

How do you know I’m not a deep O’Malley partisan? Why does thinking Bernie screwed up here royally automatically make one a Hillarista? It’s so deeply partisan to maintain Bernie Sanders is responsible for the actions of his own campaign, including its high level staff. That they’re responsible when they hire someone, who breaks the rules on their behalf. Not the guys who gave him a reference. It’s somewhat amusing that such dismissive accusations of partisanship are so very, very, partisan. But I suppose reality has a well known partisan bias, too.

joe from Lowell

Because none of the O’Malley people I’ve met are shallow enough to think that a “buck stops there” reference is an intelligent rejoinder.

joe from Lowell

In any situation in which someone in a campaign or connected to a candidate does something, it’s possible to have a fair and intelligent conversation about whether, and to what degree, it reflects on the candidate. And it’s possible to shamelessly hack away.

Eli, don’t write garbage like “It’s good to know that in a future Sanders Administration, he’s not at fault for any cabinet appointments that come recommended to him by someone else,” or “So the buck stops where?” and then put on the poutrage act about those horrible partisans who object.

random

are shallow enough to think that a “buck stops there” reference is an intelligent rejoinder.

It’s pretty standard practice to hold a politician accountable for the conduct and statements of their high-ranking campaign employees. And to ask how that reflects on their potential political leadership seems pretty fair and standard as well.

In this case, his high-ranking people shouldn’t even be talking to the media about this soap opera bullshit at all at this point. Either Sanders hasn’t given the STFU order or one of his senior people didn’t take that order seriously. Either way it goes back to his campaign not having its act together right now.

EliHawk

Sorry Joe, I didn’t realize one sentence dismissals of someone as a hack or a Hillary partisan were the height of intellectual engagement. Who can forget the brilliant faux-coughing of the Algonquin Round Table and accusations of tattoos on foreheads from the salons of Paris? Clearly my posts failed to sufficiently reach the heights of argument for the board. If there’s one thing that Lawyers, Guns & Money does not stand for, it’s pithy quips and general attempts at humor.

As random points out below, it’s eminently reasonable to hold a candidate accountable to the behavior and message coming out of his subordinates. And that message is, at its most charitable (dismissing the implication of conspiracy) is that “It’s not our fault, they recommended him! They gave him references! So it’s really their fault.” Which is just the latest version of the message coming from his campaign ever since this broke, a ton of ‘soap opera bullshit’ pointing fingers at everyone but themselves and declaring war on the party rather than getting it taken care of and just letting the matter die. I think it’s terrible behavior, speaks terribly on the campaign, and speaks terribly on Sanders himself that he doesn’t tell them all to STFU. And I say that as someone who has not decided who he’s voting for in this primary. It’s quite possible to think Sanders’ people are being tools for reason other than secret loyalty to a particular candidate.

Manny Kant

As I said, if that’s what he’s saying, that’s totally inane, and he absolutely should not be spouting easily misinterpreted inanities to reporters.

SausalitoSurfer

Your spinning of a ridiculous scenario does not discredit the possibility of a less elaborate plan to undermine the Sanders campaign.
If DWS intended nothing underhanded, let’s have an investigation and eliminate any questions. Her repeated tendency to handle things clumsily suggests that there is something to hide.

joe from Lowell

I don’t think the Sanders campaign really wants an investigation.

I think they want to threaten an investigation and an acrimonious fight in order to get DWSDNC to knock off its efforts to use this to benefit Clinton.

That tactic worked for getting the data access restored; why wouldn’t they try it to get DWS to stop playing her Wurlitzer?

Joe–I like your theory. I happen to think that Bernie is a level-headed political realist and much smarter than people give him credit for.

joe from Lowell

Sanders is known as Mr. Amendment because he got more of them passed than anyone else in the House while he was there.

He’s not some babe in the woods. He’s good at this.

random

I don’t think the Sanders campaign really wants an investigation.

At this point, I don’t think they know what they want.

I think they want to threaten an investigation and an acrimonious fight in order to get DWSDNC to knock off its efforts to use this to benefit Clinton.

“Do what I say or I’ll remind everyone of that time my campaign got caught cheating” isn’t much of a threat. At any rate, I don’t see how him getting mired in a prolonged soap opera battle with his own party doesn’t hurt him.

That tactic worked for getting the data access restored;

Nah, it was widely expected they would get access back anyway once they started firing responsible account holders. They would have gotten laughed out of court otherwise.

why wouldn’t they try it to get DWS to stop playing her Wurlitzer?

Because she isn’t. The two people bearing almost all of the responsibility for Sanders losing to Clinton are Sanders and Clinton. You’re basically just blaming Sanders’s short-comings on other people and crediting Clinton’s successes to other people too. It’s just not the case that he’s been treated unfairly.

JMP

Why would the Clinton campaign or the DNC make any sort of plan to undermine the Sanders campaign when he has no shot at all of actually winning the primaries, though? I know that a certain type of brogressive absolutely hates Debbie Wasserman Schultz and think she’s basically Satan for some vague reason (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man), but this is just nuts.

Phil Perspective

I know that a certain type of brogressive absolutely hates Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and think she’s basically Satan for some vague reason (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man), but this is just nuts.

Throwing around slurs, I see. It has nothing to do with DWS being a woman. It has everything to do with the fact that she sucks at her job. Just like Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emanuel suck at their jobs.

jben

Nah.

I mean, I don’t think that DWS is good at her job, but I think that her heart is in the right place. (And frankly, most of the issues with DWS have much more to do with her being a more traditional kind of congressperson than her politics).

By contrast, Cuomo and Emmanuel actually are significantly to the right of the average Democrat. (Cuomo, in particular, seems to actively hinder more liberal NY Democrats every chance he gets ).

Not every party establishment/DNC person is a Conservadem. In fact, most of them aren’t. I know this goes against your general beliefs, Phil, but it is not in fact the case that the party establishment is a monolithic conspiracy against liberals!

efgoldman

I know that a certain type of brogressive absolutely hates Debbie Wasserman Schultz and think she’s basically Satan for some vague reason (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man)

I think it has more to do with the results of the non-presidential elections, especially the midterms, than what’s between her legs.
I don’t know enough inside stuff to know how much the DNC does, and what they’re supposed to do. But some people have kept 2006 in their heads, when Dean was in charge with what he called a 50-state strategy. To them, it looks like DWS has ceded huge swaths of the country to the RWNJs – not helped by the fact that she’s very close to, and helpful to, her RWNJ friends from adjacent districts.
Also, knowing nothing about it personally, I have read that she’s very abrasive. Now THAT might be pure sexism.

EliHawk

If only there was some other kind of thing that might explain why Democrats could win in places like Mississippi and West Virginia in 2006 but not in 2010 or 2014. Nah, must be DWS not being sufficiently Deaniac.

The thing is, yes 2010 and 2014 were going to be bad for Democrats. (And frankly, a lot of the 2006 midterm wins were due to Bush being pretty unpopular by this time.) But I don’t buy that either 2010 or 2014 had to be quite the utter disasters that they were- and the Democratic campaigns in those years were often quite bad.

As Goldman says, the loses in the Appalachian region and the South were expected to a certain degree. Its the losses in places like the Midwest and more moderate states that are really perplexing.

The DNC bears some responsibility for how the campaign turned out. It’s just hard to know how much to blame DWS, given that her loudest critics tend to be, well, people like Phil.

Eli Rabett

How about you tie them up a bit? Which was the whole point of the 50 state strategy, that and pick up a few state leg seats which come in handy.

joe from Lowell

Just to keep the pool clear: DWS took over as DNC Chair in 2011. You can’t really put 2010 on her.

cpinva

“Also, knowing nothing about it personally, I have read that she’s very abrasive. Now THAT might be pure sexism.”

that’s just exactly what it is. if she was a guy, everyone would be applauding her for being tough, and not putting up with any BS. since she’s a she, she’s just being “bitchy”, or “it’s that time of month” crap.

if, by “abrasive”, they mean she doesn’t put up with conservative lies on sunday morning talk shows, then yes, she’s “abrasive”, and more power to her.

I watched her once on some talk show, with 2 or 3 conservatives on, “for balance”, and she absolutely refused to let them get away with spewing obvious lies, that the moderator was quite happy to let them do. i’ll take that abrasiveness any day of the week.

Yeah, well, he was the moderator and it was his JOB! So where does she get off trying to shut them down? Women are always barging into places where men actually WORK, and thinking anyone cares about their feelings!

(People don’t care about progressives’ opinions either, but once our generational wave gets our guy into the White House, that will change!)

joe from Lowell

Why would the Clinton campaign or the DNC make any sort of plan to undermine the Sanders campaign when he has no shot at all of actually winning the primaries, though?

Why did Nixon order a break-in against McGovern? I agree, “this is just nuts,” but it’s not the noticing-that-it-happened part that’s nuts.

Oh, and back when Sanders had “no” shot at winning the nomination, as opposed to a very small one, they weren’t.

I know that a certain type of brogressive absolutely hates Debbie Wasserman Schultz and think she’s basically Satan for some vague reason (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man), but this is just nuts.

“For some vague reason” = “I don’t know the argument, so I’m going to make up something insulting to assign to them. Since she’s a woman, I’ll call them all sexists, because that’s so awesome!”

When DWS was put in charge of the Democrats’ Red-to-Blue campaign, she refused to support Democratic candidates in Florida (one of the most promising red-to-blue areas of the country) who were running against incumbent Republicans, because she’d entered into a cease-fire agreement among Florida incumbents in order to save her own seat.

I have no doubt you’ll come up with some explanation for why it’s the most misogynist thing EVAH for anyone to object to that. Just don’t expect the upper 90% of the commentariat to find it terribly moving.

humanoid.panda

She won each of her last 3 elections with over 60% of vote. I don’t know if she did or didn’t sign any pacts with other incumbents, but it doesn’t seem like she needed that pact to save her seat..

joe from Lowell

Sure she did; it’s an incumbent-protection agreement, and she’s one of the incumbents. Not her seat exclusively, but hers was one of the seats.

It’s tough to have competitive elections when the two sides won’t compete.

random

Actually it was an agreement not to attack three socially-liberal Republicans who were critical votes on her LGBT council.

I dunno if that’s the right decision, but you have to significantly misrepresent it to turn it into some kind of outrage or some kind of selling-out of Liberal Values.

She’s been chair during precisely one mid-term, it was a 2nd-term mid-term with her party holding the White House, and it was one of the grimmest maps you can possibly get. Blaming her for losses there doesn’t make much sense to me.

So “brogressives hate D in ways that go beyond rational objections to what she’s done” implies “everybody is mean to D because they’re misoooogyyyyniiiists!” because that’s how women always talk, and those kinds of women can’t accept that some women just really are bitches?

And therefore a TOTALLY reasonable response is to complain that “brogressives” is a slur and totally out of bounds, and then go on to hurl insults.

eta on second thought I think the original comment was just trolling–looks like joe from lowell got pwned, thinking he isn’t saying exactly what they said in the first place

joe from Lowell

Speaking of “exactly what they said in the first place,” let’s compare what you wrote to what you claiming JMP wrote:

Actual quote:

I know that a certain type of brogressive absolutely hates Debbie Wasserman Schultz and think she’s basically Satan for some vague reason (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man), but this is just nuts.

What bianca wrote:

So “brogressives hate D in ways that go beyond rational objections to what she’s done” implies “everybody is mean to D because they’re misoooogyyyyniiiists!” because that’s how women always talk, and those kinds of women can’t accept that some women just really are bitches?

No, bianca. (which seems to mostly be for the crime of not being a man) doesn’t “imply” anything about them all being misogynists. It openly, in black and white, explicitly states that they are, citing that alleged shortcoming as the reason for their objection.

Yeah, the people who got pwned are the ones who replied to a calmly worded comment, speculating about who might hate DWS and some reasons they might hate her, by spewing pretend parodies of how they think women talk, and whining that anybody who uses the word brogressive is a man-hater (she used the word brogressive! she hates me! must attack!). Like you.

joe from Lowell

by spewing pretend parodies of how they think women talk, and whining that anybody who uses the word brogressive is a misogynist (she used the word brogressive! she hates me! must attack!). Like you.

Citations omitted.

By all means, please quote my “parodies of how they think women talk” or my statement about the word “brogressive.”

Take all the time you need. I know it might be an extended period, with your reading thing, but we’ll wait.

Cue Jeopardy theme.

Ed – I just looked up “parody.” As it turns out, it doesn’t include anything about cut-and-pasting.

I don’t need to be all earnest and eager to please and write a page-long post with proper citation format, because you demanded that I do that. I said my piece above.

I don’t need to have the last word, or show that I’m more inventive in hurling insults and making up demands, in order to prove I’ve won, either,

joe from Lowell

I don’t need to be all earnest and eager to please and write a page-long post with proper citation format, because you demanded that I do that.

Citations again omitted. Are you having some other argument with some other person on another site and accidentally posting your replies here? Because you keep doing this, over and over, responding to things that don’t exist while being completely unresponsive to the actual comments that have you in such a stew.

I don’t need to have the last word, or show that I’m more inventive in hurling insults and making up demands, in order to prove I’ve won, either

random

I wanted to point out that conservative Republicans also have an extreme hatred for Reince Preibus that goes way beyond any rational justification. They immediately fall for and spread bullshit lies about him supposedly working for the Democrats as well.

Exact same thing here.

There is a ludicrously high degree of totally unjustified hatred for DWS and a lot of FUD gets spread about her as well.

Yes the hatred of her has no realistic or rational basis. But no, that doesn’t necessarily mean the people leveling the totally-over-the-top hatred for her are motivated by sexism.

joe from Lowell

I missed the best part: being able to read what’s in the sentence is an expression of “because that’s how women always talk.”

Oh, and something about “bitches,” which is one of those words that sends a tingle up some people’s legs and makes them feel like they’re really hitting a nerve, man.

More likely they planted the ‘mole’ with instructions to take advantage of any opportunity to seriously injure Bernie’s campaign. Why WOULDN’T they? They are aiming for the most powerful political office on the planet. Why would they NOT use sneaky tricks to win?

joe from Lowell

It is almost always the case that getting caught doing a dirty trick hurts you more than the trick working would hurt your opponent. Why did Al Gore’s campaign give back the briefing book that a Bradley staffer lost? (Or is that vice-versa?) Because they’re all just wonderfully terrific guys?

This stuff is dangerous. Look at all the trouble the Sanders campaign is getting over one of their staffers doing something inappropriate. There is always a good reason not to mess around with stunts like this.

efgoldman

Why WOULDN’T they?

The unanswerable question at the nut of all big conspiracy theories.
On the order of “when did you stop beating your wife?”

ColBatGuano

Yes, because there is absolutely no possibility that Utresky would just come out and admit this is what happened. Did Clinton add him to their murder victims file?

cpinva

“Did Clinton add him to their murder victims file?”

after the election, when everyone’s forgotten about him.

SausalitoSurfer

I have no way of knowing if the charges raised in the Yahoo article are true. They haven’t been investigated yet. I agree with Paul that the Yahoo article is “lightly sourced”. However, equating the charges raised to the rantings of an idiotic writer over at Salon is an ad hominem attack that does nothing to clarify the issue.
Further, using the word “truther” draws an apparent equivalence between something that has been thoroughly debunked with something not yet considered in detail.
As Cervantes points out, DWS has not acted as an honest broker in her position as DNC chairman. Her favoratism of Hillary has been obvious and, at times, ham-handed.
Let’s have an investigation into any prior data breaches quickly and be done with it. To the extent that DWS resists this, it will reinforce impressions that the fix is in.

Disclosure: Strong Bernie supporter who intends to vote for the eventual Democratic nominee.

Riggsveda

Even more to the point, my husband has worked in and with quite a number of Democratic campaigns in suburban Philadelphia, and he tells me it’s not uncommon for rival campaigns to send moles into each other’ staff. When I asked him if the idea was possible or absurd, he laughed and said “It happens all the time. There’s no honor there.”

Maybe we should hear from people who actually know something about this first-hand instead of Mini-Me types carrying on about chemtrails.

random

The accusation isn’t simply that one campaign planted a mole to leak information about another campaign. It’s much more ludicrous than that and basically checks off every box of “is my conspiracy theory bullshit”?

Manny Kant

Even if there does end up being something to this (which seems extraordinarily unlikely to me), how does it possibly do the Sanders campaign any good to provide evidence-free leaks like this?

JMP

So is this the world where 9/11 was an inside job, the moon landing was faked, JFK was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald but some elaborate conspiracy, climate change was just made up by every scientist in the world, vaccines cause autism, and the Earth is just 6,000 years old and flat? You don’t need inside info to know that a completely bugfuck insane conspiracy theory is not real.

Nobdy

I would assume the talk of a “conspiracy” is just frustration talking, but I understand why Sanders would be annoyed by the series of events:

1) You told us to hire this guy
2) You messed up security on your web site
3) The guy you told us to hire took advantage of your mistake
4) You punished us severely

I don’t think there was any conspiracy or set up, but I’m sure it’s very frustrating for Sanders. And I think that 4 is the real issue here (What’s astonishing is not that the whole thing was a set up but that the campaign would be severely punished by the DNC for the rogue actions of a guy who was vetted and recommended by the DNC.)

Manny Kant

Were they actually punished severely? They had access cut off for like two days before either the DNC blinked or they gave the DNC what they wanted (it’s not completely clear which of those happened) and they got access back.

Nobdy

I got the impression that they felt they were punished severely, which is all that really matters for these purposes.

SNF

It’s completely unfair to get punished when you get caught cheating.

joe from Lowell

YEAH! I DON’T KNOW WHAT BRADY WAS WHINING ABOUT!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the mindset that brought you mandatory minimum drug sentences.

random

The mindset here is “Since the punishment actually does fit the crime like a glove, it doesn’t seem unfair”.

joe from Lowell

“Geez, I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about. You blocked most of the punches I threw at your face.”

Scott Lemieux

Were they actually punished severely?

Nah.

Gregor Sansa

Huh?

The DNC shut off their access to their own data. If they hadn’t gone to court about it, they would have been completely dead in the water in terms of any voter outreach for a whole weekend. This is like sending a whole family to jail because the kid shoplifted. Turns out they spent less than a day in metaphorical jail, which is not completely unreasonable; but if the DNC had had it’s way, it would have been at least 3 times that, and probably more.

random

You are simultaneously arguing that this information is vitally important, but that getting caught stealing it from another campaign shouldn’t merit much punishment.

If access to the data is a big deal, then stealing the data is something that merits a strict punishment.

joe from Lowell

Hey, Mr. Top Advisor:

Just stop talking already!

Nobody cares about the “data breach.” Don’t bring it up.

Even if your little theory was true, which is silly, complaining to the press isn’t going to help.

joe from Lowell

Reading the piece a little closer, it appears that the Yahoo reporter manufactured the conspiracy charge, and the Sanders advisor was complaining about hypocrisy and the general unfairness of the whole thing.

Go ahead, read all the quotes as if the reporter hadn’t already planted the word “conspiracy” in your head. Decide for yourself what they mean.

CrunchyFrog

That fits, and is par for the course these days. Modern political reporters lose consciousness if they have to report on the details between, for example, what Sanders’ tax plan would mean for the average person versus Cruz’ tax plan. Boooooooorrrring. What they want to report on is the blow-by-blow of reality show cat fights. “What did Trump say about Clinton’s bathroom habits? How did she respond? Will this improve Cruz’ numbers? We’ll be investigating in detail for the next hour, with our special guests: an expert who we won’t tell you is a plant from Cruz’ campaign, an expert who we won’t tell you is paid by an anti-Clinton group, and our in-house expert who, like most top staff on 24 hour new shows, literally sleeps with a top GOP figure every night.”

If you focus just on the quotes it’s fair position: Look, the guy did a bad thing but you suggested we hire him. Once we found out we fired him. I’m not saying you set us up, but don’t blame us for it either.

joe from Lowell

“Staffer Whines That Life, Politics are Unfair”

Hmmm…not bad, but can you punch that up a little?

Yes, sir, I sure can!

Sly

New York Post Editor: Now if you want to work here at the New York Post, you must know that we insert the following words into every headline: headless, nude, sewage, and governor. For instance, “Campaign Staffer Complains About Voter File Data Breach” becomes “Governor and Headless Campaign Staffer Found Nude in Voter Sewage.”

Miranda Tompkins: What about the data breach?

New York Post Editor: You’re fired.

MAJeff

Modern political reporters lose consciousness if they have to report on the details between, for example, what Sanders’ tax plan would mean for the average person versus Cruz’ tax plan. Boooooooorrrring.

It’s not just this, but also that they are not capable of doing that analysis. They’re political reporters, not policy reporters. They only know horserace, and are utterly incompetent when it comes to understanding the implications of what those horses say.

N__B

In other words, they’re completely useless.

MAJeff

Yes.

I mean, Chuck Todd….

joe from Lowell

Hey, at least Chuck Todd can actually do the horse-race competently.

How many talking heads are out there babbling about “momentum” and crap?

Mitt Romney’s crowds are bigger now that the election is closer. To discuss whether this guarantees a Republican victory, we’ve assembled a panel…

efgoldman

Hey, at least Chuck Todd can actually do the horse-race competently.

Not that I’ve ever seen.
But then, I hear the sound of the adults speaking in “Peanuts” specials.

muddy

At least he seems mildly exasperated when talking to Trump.

Literally the least he could do, but it’s more than many allow themselves to display.

joe from Lowell

I’m thinking back to 2008, when he was NBC and MSNBC’s numbers guy. He (very politely and deferentially) pointed out that Hillary was out of it months before the rest of the media acknowledged it. He talked about the EC and the difficulties it posed for the Republicans when the rest of the media was looking at national polls and saying the race could go either way.

He was a breath of fresh air that year.

Barry_D

“It’s not just this, but also that they are not capable of doing that analysis. They’re political reporters, not policy reporters. They only know horserace, …”

Nate Silver proved beyond a reasonable doubt that almost none of them even understand the horserace. They can produce cloud of BS about the horserace, but if you simply averaged the polls, you knew more than the combined political punditry knew.

Manny Kant

They can produce cloud of BS about the horserace, but if you simply averaged the polls, you knew more than the combined political punditry knew.

If only Nate Silver would “simply average the polls.”

CrunchyFrog

Nate Silver proved beyond a reasonable doubt that almost none of them even understand the horserace. They can produce cloud of BS about the horserace, but if you simply averaged the polls, you knew more than the combined political punditry knew.

In other words, they are the same as sports pundits (thinking, oh I dunno, Skip Bayless here).

joe from Lowell

Sports media seems to have slightly more consequences for being wrong, if only because they let the rabble call in and give the hosts grief.

CrunchyFrog

True to a degree, but in both cases their gigs are dependent on being entertaining, not on being accurate.

Since Monty Python was chosen as the “hook” for this post, I’ll recall another Monty Python skit involving the election results between the Silly Party and the Sensible Party. A great line from one of the pundits was:

“Well, this was exactly as a predicted, except of course that the other party won.”

efgoldman

Sports media seems to have slightly more consequences for being wrong, if only because they let the rabble call in and give the hosts grief.

I dunno’. Bayless still has a high-paying, highly-visible job. He’s the Bill Kristol of sports, except possibly more obnoxious.

cpinva

“If you focus just on the quotes it’s fair position: Look, the guy did a bad thing but you suggested we hire him. Once we found out we fired him. I’m not saying you set us up, but don’t blame us for it either.”

only one, small, itsy bits problem: it was the Sanders campaign’s job to do due diligence on the guy, before they hired him, even if he was referred by the data company. that’s how it works in real life. the Sanders’ people fucked up, by not doing a sufficient background check on him, and just taking the word of the data co. that he was good to go.

so yeah, the data co. referred him, but Sanders’ people failed to do their job, before actually hiring him. sympathy lost.

Paul Campos

It would be very irresponsible of the reporter to use the word conspiracy unless at a minimum he asked the adviser whether the adviser was suggesting a conspiracy and the adviser refused to say he or she wasn’t.

Suggesting the reporter was that irresponsible seems quite speculative unless you know his work in general (I don’t).

joe from Lowell

You want us to imagine that there must have been a quote from the staffer about a conspiracy, or a question from the reporter about conspiracy that one of the quotes was a response to…a quote or a question that the reporter didn’t put into the story. We’re just supposed to assume it had to be there, and then further assume that the reporter or editor decided to leave the gold nugget out.

And to do otherwise is “speculative.” It’s only “speculative” if we don’t assume the existence of the evidence that we’ve never seen, and judge on the evidence in front of us.

OK.

Suggesting the reporter was that irresponsible seems quite speculative unless you know his work in general (I don’t).

I know he works for Yahoo News. Is that enough? When was the last time you linked to something written by a Yahoo News reporter?

Paul Campos

I’m suggesting the reporter said something like “do you think this is some sort of conspiracy?” and the adviser didn’t say “no.” Now if the reporter never asked the adviser something like that and threw in the word conspiracy completely on his own, that would be very irresponsible. I don’t know if he did or if he didn’t, but basically you’re accusing this reporter of making up the central claim in the story. That seems speculative to me.

joe from Lowell

I know what you’re suggesting. I don’t see any reason to think that’s true, given the quotes and the rest of the reporting. The quote itself certainly doesn’t get us there, and the reporter doesn’t say anything about bringing it up himself.

“Manufactured” may have been bad word choice. That the reporter maliciously invented a lie is a low-probability explanation. He could have just been wrong. He could have put 2 and 2 together wrongly. He could have gone into the interview with a bias about Crazy Bernie Sanders and interpreted the staffer’s comments through that lens. There’s a lot of bad reporting out there, and this seems to fall into that category.

DocAmazing

So “conspiracy” is not the result of a conspiracy?

Wheels outside of wheels, man!

joe from Lowell

Wheels in the general vicinity of some other, unrelated wheels.

Wake up, America!

Lee Rudolph

Where there’s wheels there’s axles!!!

Burning_River

What would feel entirely plausible to me is that the reporter would be the one to introduce the word ‘conspiracy’ into the conversation with the staffer, and then when he/she gets an answer that sounds like:’No, not a conspiracy but,

“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh [Uretsky] from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” the adviser said. . .

That would be all the reporter needs to get their ‘angle’.

Paul Campos

That’s possible, but that would also be journalistic malpractice, given the way the story is written.

The possibilities here range from “rogue staffer whining in a way that unscrupulous journalist recharacterizes to sound like conspiracy theorizing” to “Sanders campaign decides to leak story accusing Clinton campaign of Nixonian dirty tricks.” And a lot of points in between.

Brien Jackson

Does the term “journalist” convey some sort of superhuman power to avoid fucking up at your job, ever, these days?

Hogan

We were just discussing that last week at Maggiano’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in Philadelphia’s Little Italy section.

joe from Lowell

I could see it going that way. But if you’re a reporter, and you’re saying a guy “seems to suggest” a conspiracy theory, and he answered, “No, not a conspiracy theory, but…” to a question about a conspiracy, you’d better not cut that part out of the quote.

I could also see that quote having nothing to do with a charge of conspiracy, and being more of a lament about their bad behavior since the story broke, and the reporter going in with a certain mindset about the crazy Berniacs and reading what he expected to find into the quote.

Burning_River

Sure, and I think both you and Paul have a point in that regard. That said, I don’t think ‘journalistic malpractice’ is as uncommon in our political reporting as we’d all like to think it should be.

Also, I may be a bit too simplistic, but, I’d prefer it if somebody from the Sanders campaign put their name on an actual direct quote about a conspiracy before the media has it’s fun making them sound crazy.

joe from Lowell

Perhaps the season is bringing out an excess of charitableness on my part, but even in this story, the reporter wrote one weak line in a longer piece. He didn’t make the alleged claim of a conspiracy the lede; almost all of the story was about something else.

It’s just that we’re reading it via Paul’s post, which focused in on the one bit of the article that he found interesting, so we’re reading the piece as being mainly about that.

efgoldman

Perhaps the season is bringing out an excess of charitableness on my part

Oh FSM, NO! Lead me to my fainting couch.
You’re the one guy I can always count on to be even less charitable than I am.

CrunchyFrog

I dunno. Every single time I knew a topic in depth that was covered by a news article that news article was wrong on several counts. I would barely assume that the quotes are accurate – I would never assume that the reporter had actually done the legwork to justify his/her speculation.

Keep in mind that people who by nature tend to get all of the details right basically never go into journalism. I think a lot of those people did choose journalism in the first half of the 20th century, when career options were different and journalism was seen as a career that could make a difference on behalf of the average person. But not for a long time.

Every time I hear this, I think of the PE teacher who misgraded a Health quiz, where the questions and answers were in the textbook, had the four or five people in the class whom he’d graded as right raise their hands, and asked if we were really going to insist that all these people were wrong.

MartinAlexander

But the real question is,who provided the,audit logs that were used to source the original story?

carolannie

Seriously? Campos repeats a “lightly sourced” (eg probably untrue) version of a story and goes all ballistic? Who should we say “ugh” to now? If I go about and concatenate a bunch of sentences or thoughts together I too can try to spread a rumor about.

joe from Lowell

To be fair, this isn’t exactly ballistic. Campos suggested that a single guy said something stupid to a reporter, and the campaign should squash it. It’s not exactly Drudge and his siren.

Yeah, the headline is a little click-baity. They should have Shakezula write all the headlines.

#2: My God, you’re right! I mean, we’ve already established that Uretsky is a black-hat hacker who invaded the Clinton campaign’s personal space, stole data, directed his subordinates to do the same, and then made up a lie about his query being a diagnostic effort to determine the extent of the breach and protect the Sanders’ campaign data. Right? We’ve established all of that about him, right? I keep hearing that all of that has been established, anyway, so if we’re talking about such a deplorable person, it only makes sense to wind out the string a little more, amirite?

Man, doncha just hate conspiracy theories?

Dr. Ronnie James, DO

All I wanted was a Pepsi

Dr. Ronnie James, DO

All I wanted was a Pepsi!

joe from Lowell

Normal people don’t double-post that way.

efgoldman

Normal people don’t double-post that way.

Maybe the Doc is having a sugar crash sugar crash.

N__B

As Linda Ronstadt once sang, it’s so easy to double post, it’s so easy to double post, it’s so easy to double post, it’s so easy to double post, it’s so easy to double post.

rea

People say Bernie’s staffers are fools,
There they go breaking all the rules . . .

Nick never Nick

It’s probably silly to imply a conspiracy here, yes.

It’s completely absurd to dignify implying a conspiracy here with the excessive term ‘truther’, normally reserved for irrational, paranoid scum.

joe from Lowell

Whoops, misplaced comment. Feel free to delete.

RonC

The politics on this site are fascinating. So good when it comes to analyzing right wing or conservative activities and so bad when it comes to analyzing things that involve leftists/progressives/liberals.

Nick never Nick

I agree — it’s a good illustration of the rage that small differences can fuel.

wengler

Just always know that when the going gets tough, Lemieux is going to punch some hippies.

jim, some guy in iowa

when did “hippie” become synonymous with “whiny, self-important & unrealistic”?

joe is right. I wouldn’t conclude from a Yahoo News story that the quotes used are quoted in context, in correct order, etc. I wouldn’t conclude that when the reporter says the source suggested something, it isn’t the reporter’s own conclusion. But if the campaign’s response is to complain that their opponents need to take responsibility for what happened in their own campaign, well, it sounds like something Sarah Palin would say.

eta: “we were trying to prove the insufficiency of their security” is also an unfortunate choice, due to the associations it invokes

TopsyJane

I think that “centrally connect this thing” in the following does imply that the “entities” were somehow in cahoots.

“I don’t know how you can more centrally connect this thing than those two entities,” the adviser explained. “Here we are being attacked by both of those entities when, in fact, they recommended this guy to the campaign.”

Alex.S

This article is now popping up on the social media feeds of my pro-Sanders friends.

So, I guess the rank and file are interested in a conspiracy theory to explain why… I’m not even sure they believe the Sanders campaign made a mistake. But if they did, it’s because of the DNC! And the Samders campaign remains pure and he’s still not a politician.

joe from Lowell

Again, most of the article – as in, all of a fairly long piece except for one line – isn’t about a conspiracy theory.

MDrew

But Sanders should quash this kind of thing right away.

Why, again?

LosGatosCA

Use of the word conspiracy here is pretty ridiculous, if the top advisor is really implying premeditation, which it’s not clear to me s/he actually is.

On the other hand, I can easily see (from my own software development projects) where a literal outsider (Sanders – Socialst, not formal Democrat, remember) wants to follow the rules and checks with said rule enforcers (DNC, NGP VAN) to get a guy who is supposed to know how to help them navigate the water without making waves and then the guy turns out to be a complete rogue asshole. Maybe he did it out of lack of ethics (political consulting, really?), maybe he did it because he’s an incompetent asshole (Democratic consultant, really?) or maybe he did it because he knew he would get caught and it would embarrass Sanders, thinking that was a good thing from whatever personal perspective he might have ( HRC supporter, disgruntled with Bernies campaign, whatever.)

Then Bernie’s team takes decisive action to chop the bad apple. Then they get a pretty drastic response from another incompetent (DWS) who sees this as a help to HRC, it’s not.

So in a reasonable human response, they feel like they were set up by the people who recommended the snooping asshole. That doesn’t necessarily mean they think it was done purposefully. However, that’s a naive political response no matter what they think about the motivation. Take your loss, realize you made an unfortunate judgment in character for at least two people , the hire and the reference(s), and move on.

LosGatosCA

This is also a pretty standard type of response from an NCAA school that just lost scholarships and playoff money due to NCAA sanctions for, rightly or wrongly, they think are minor technical infractions:

1. The rules are unfair,
2. We cooperated with the investigation
3. We fired the recruiting assistant who committed the minor infraction
4. Blah, blah, blah

Leaders aren’t whiny.

Candidates for Presidents of the US need to make sure the voters don’t think they are whining excuse makers.

joe from Lowell

Really? When did this start?

Does this mean the “Hillary is being persecuted by the media and treated disrespectfully; donate now!” emails are going to be on hold for a while?

I see that “truther” is now heading toward being yet another meaningless political term.

joe from Lowell

The way these neolibs throw around the word Truther is totally fascist.

JCougar

While this entire “conspiracy” is a lot more plausible than Campos purports it to be, this is one of those political conflicts where the first person to drop it wins. The person that’s still making excuses after the fact seems either more guilty or just more insecure–and neither one is a political win.

Bernie’s campaign should just let this impulse fizzle out into nothing, forgotten somewhere in Collective America’s beer, glowing screen, and oxycontin-infused hippocampal synapse gaps; a short-term memory to be petered out like a pathetically small meteorite destined to be broken up by Earth’s atmosphere long before it reaches even the stratosphere; a distant AM radio signal wrestled by interference such as Who Messed Up the Grammys This Year, What Wild Animal Is Loose in A Suburban Town Really Similar To Yours, Who’s Going to Win at Sports, and internet porn.

That’s what the Hillary “H” with the forward arrow symbolizes. Not progress, but the realization that whatever was done, said, or advocated for in the past means nothing, and whatever carefully manufactured issue that is this instant is all that is meaningful and true in the world.

Zaphod X

Completely concurr with Nobday who earlier in this thread posted:

“I would assume the talk of a “conspiracy” is just frustration talking, but I understand why Sanders would be annoyed by the series of events:

1) You told us to hire this guy
2) You messed up security on your web site
3) The guy you told us to hire took advantage of your mistake
4) You punished us severely”

Yes, exactly. That in isolation would cause remarkable frustration – and couple to that the security had been faulty before, as well as a not-entirely-imagined bias of the DNC towards HRC and I’d be foaming at the mouth.

Also, were it me, being cut off from your own data for two entire days qualifies as severe punishment. Every second in a campaign counts – the fiendish energy and effort of any serious campaign in a competive race attests to this. Being disconnected from this information at any time disrupts much work.

Moreover, to be disconnected from your own voter data as you are frantically preparing for a nationally televised debate seems devesrating. This was the last time for several weeks Sanders had a nationally televised stage from which he could both speak directly to the general public and engage his opponent in real time. Opportunities such as this demand epic and thorough preparation and rely heavily on as much up-to-the-second information as possible for maximum effect. Knowledge being most definitely power. Two full days cut off from your own knowlege base and then having to publicly apologize to your opponent on top of it all, in light of this? Yeah, I’d be pissed.
And finally, you could read that last quote in the Yahoo article as a hint of a conspiracy but you certainly could read it in a way that it wasn’t – and I think the Yahoo reporter pushed the envelope a bit in directing interpretation of that quote in the way he did, in a way other writers for national publications would have addressed with more subtlety, or not at all.